Get this into your thick skull. Ignore Metro. Focus on the desktop mode. If you launch Chrome there it appears just as it did in Windows 7, and you switch tabs, just like in Windows 7. The only time you may need Metro is for launching a program you don't use so often. You can change default programs so you will rarely see Metro. Nearly everything you did on Windows 7 desktop is still there in Windows 8 desktop. Ignore Metro.

You're not actually thinking ahead. Microsoft is strongly pushing for Metro so more-and-more applications will start moving there. In some cases it will simply be the hare-brainedness of the developers, in some cases it will be "incentive" from Microsoft's part, but eventually more and more applications will only offer Metro-interface when running under Windows 8 with no way of changing to classic interface.

Eventually the more and more of the applications you use are moved to Metro-only interface the larger the hit on your workflow will become.

Sure, you could try to find alternatives for the applications you use, but often these alternatives are simply not good enough and that, again, causes a negative hit on your workflow.

If lots of apps move to metro as time goes on, Thom can spen an increasing amount of time in metro, and his complaint regarding ease of switching between desktop apps and metro apps has less merit as time goes on.

If lots of apps move to metro as time goes on, Thom can spen an increasing amount of time in metro, and his complaint regarding ease of switching between desktop apps and metro apps has less merit as time goes on.

Actually quite the contrary. Often times when doing actual work on a computer you need to switch between windows, if some of the windows are Metro and some are non-Metro you'll just get the utterly distracting transition between the two every single time. Now, there is also a situation where you may have two Metro-applications side-by-side, but then you need to switch to a desktop-application briefly and back: will your two Metro-applications still be side-by-side or will you have to adjust them again?

The whole thing boils down to the fact that often proper productivity tools cannot be constrained into a single full-screen window without sacrificing on the features and/or productivity, so there is bound to be desktop-applications for years and years to come, and with them comes the jarring transition between desktop-mode and Metro-mode.